Description: The most prolific ethnographic filmmaker in the world, a pioneer of cinema verite, and one of the earliest ethnographers of African societies, Jean Rouch (1917-) remains a controversial and often misunderstood figure in histories of anthropology and film. This situation, Paul Stoller suggests, results largely from the neglect of Rouch's voluminous and ongoing ethnographic writings. Stoller, who has done more fieldwork among the Songhay of Niger than anyone other than Rouch himself, here presents for the first time an extensive analysis of the ethnography in Rouch's writings and films. By doing so, he seeks to clarify Rouch's approach, hi position, and his significance to contemporary anthropological debates.

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